


Starbright

by Mousewrites



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Cats, Dursely’s Cult of Normal is an ACTUAL cult, Hedonism, M/M, Pilot harry, Sci-Fi, Science Fantasy, Space Opera, fluffy (for me), healer Snape, so many cats, weird science, witches are known
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27874257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mousewrites/pseuds/Mousewrites
Summary: A traveling healer reluctantly takes on an unusual passenger, and ends up showing him what he's been missing.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 28
Kudos: 40





	1. The boy called Mud

He spent his last chits at a dodgy looking moisture vendor, sticking the neck of his bottle under the dribbling tap of the rusty condenser, wincing a little at the orange tinged water slowly filling the scratched plastic. It would have to do. The vendor didn’t even turn towards him, just stuck a weathered hand out of their nest of robes for the chits, and then went back to watching the program blaring from the little holoscreen, the hand and the last of his money disappearing like they had never been.

And with that, he was a pauper.

This dusty, hyper little moon orbited a binary star, and only the smaller, weaker sun glared down from the pink sky at the moment, and he squinted at the horizon. He only had about an hour to find somewhere shady before the huge second sun rose.

He’d had to spend a few double-noons outside since the train had dumped him off for not having a ticket, and he wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. At least now that he was actually in the sad excuse for a spaceport, he might be able to catch some shade under a ship. He’d have to share it with the fat trash lizards that dotted the landscape like lazy, stinky rocks, but he didn’t mind them all that much, and he had learned to follow them to shade if he couldn’t find it himself.

Good thing he was still scrawny.

Across the packed-dirt of the square, the spaceport squatted like a toad, a scattering of shortships around it like dead flies, a few larger ones being loaded with floating carts of ore by golems. The faint screaming radiation he could see from here constantly ate at the glimmering shield around them, and he saw one of them one of them jerk to a stop as its shield failed completely. 

A Union mechanic came out in a green clean suit to thump at the golem a few times, and then declare victory when it booted itself back up when its shield replenished, strutting back to the garage like he had done something.

Fucking useless Union mechs.

No passenger ships waited at the gates, not even a sunhopper. Nothing large enough to sneak aboard, not even to the planet below. His lips thinned. All this way, and he was just stuck on a different part of the same broiling mudball. 

On the far side of the spaceport, there was a scrapyard, and he could see an old woman struggling with a wrench twice her size, trying to get a scrapped golem open that wanted nothing to do with her, stooped like a bent pin.

His stomach grumbled at him, and he sighed. She had fruit trees, fat with olives and pomegranates, and a garden going to seed. He could trade a few hours work for some fruit, assuming he could talk her into it.

The universe was determined to make him into a mechanic, no matter what he wanted. 

“Hey, watch what you're doing!" the moisture vendor whistled shrilly. 

Water gushed over his hand and splattered the ground, little rock-mouths opening from below and sucking away every spilt drop, turning to infighting immediately, the water torn from the losers’s bodies in a noisy, bloody battle an inch tall. He danced backward, yanking his duffle out of the way.

He hurriedly capped his bottle and backed off, pretending the noise of a passing cart prevented him from hearing the demands for more payment for the spilt water. He was halfway across the packed dirt of the square by the time the dust cleared behind him, and the vendor whistled several unkind things about his parents.

As he’d never known his parents, he didn’t particularly take offense. For all he knew, they did indeed wear combat boots and smell of elderberries, whatever the hell that meant.

The old woman had caught sight of him, and he waved cheerfully. She peered at him from the depths of her hat, her long white hair spilling out around her, almost to the ground. 

He glanced at the port as he walked by, noting that the golem had paused again, its shield flickering. The Union mech was scratching his head, the radiation from the ore right next to him making the golem twitch and shut down protectively, probably afraid its core would blow. The mech punched the reboot sequence, and the golem reluctantly turned on, but the radiation tripped the shutdown almost immediately.

The mech stood there, glaring at the golem like it was its fault, when all he’d have to do is push the ore cart a few feet away and let the poor thing regen its shield.

Idiot. 

He got to the gate of the scrap yard just as the mech forced another reboot, and he heard the golem bleat a warning and then shriek as its casing split. The old woman was turning to the noise, eyes sharp behind thick goggles. He didn’t have time to shout before the core detonated, blowing ore next to it and igniting a huge purple fireball. The transport ship disappeared, and he didn’t think, just threw out his hands and conjured a wall of metal out of the air in between them and the port, sending the blast roaring violet fire over their heads. 

Chunks of the transport ship and ore thudded into the barrier a moment later, and he was pushed back a foot by the force. His ears were ringing as the smoke finally caught up to the rest of the blast, and he coughed and lost his hold on the wall, which tipped forward with a crash, sending even more dust up.

Someone grabbed his arm in a tight grip and hauled him backward, toward the house. He pulled his bag with him, desperate not to lose what little he had left. The olive tree was on fire, the fruit popping and hissing in the heat, flaming leaves dropping around them as the old woman kicked the door of the house open and shoved him down the unexpected set of stairs. Compared to the fireball and acidic smoke, it was dark as hell in here.

He couldn’t see, knocking into the table with his hip, already trying to come up with some kind of plausible excuse for why either of them were still standing. He decided to play dumb; he had lots of practice at that.

The old woman pulled the door shut behind her and waved her hand over a panel on the wall, fire windows closing tight, the house systems clanking as they shut the intakes and noisily vented the smoky air. She yelled something at him he couldn’t hear, and then stuck a finger in her ear and twisted it, apparently realising she couldn’t hear either. Her goggles were gray with dust that her dirty hands just added to. She ambled into the back room, and he could feel the pipes churning and glug as she ran water.

In moments the room was clear and the lights had come on, electric light flickering in the wicks of the old-style lamps. He squinted as he looked around; he had been expecting more piles of broken machinery and scrap, like the yard.

This was a tidy little workshop, with a surprisingly tall ceiling dotted with drying bundles of herbs and lined with shelves containing entirely too many Quick objects for her to be some random scraper. This was somebody who might know what he was, might turn him in for it. 

And he had conjured an entire fucking wall right in front of her. Something quickened in the back room, and he wondered if she was calling the authorities already.

His uncle had been right; he’d burn at the stake long before he ever flew.

He didn’t have to pretend to sway; the ringing in his ears had become a dull roar, exhaustion and after-sickness pulling at the edges of his vision. The old woman appeared at his elbow, and squinted at him, her thick goggles spotless, face and hands clean and dry. He stared at her, trying to figure out if that’s what her face would look like if she was waiting for the Snatchers to come and take him away.

“My word, sit before you fall over,” she said primly, her voice rough with an accent he didn’t recognize. She pushed him toward the couch and he went numbly, clutching his bag. He should be running, he knew. Should be out the back door that he could see down the little hallway, should be heading back out to the canyons, to hide in the caves.

He sat down on the couch, pulling his bag onto his lap. Dust fell from his hood onto his hands. 

And then what? He couldn’t seem to move. He clutched his bag closer, fingertips seeking the rounded edges of the little box. It seemed intact, and the faint tingle of the quickening he had put on it was soothing.

The old woman was talking to him, but he hadn’t heard anything since she had told him to sit. She waved a hand in his face, and rolled her eyes when he followed it sluggishly. She got a mug of hot water from the kettle and dumped what looked like dirt into it from a jar shaped like a cow.

His nose picked up the smell before he did, and he found himself snuffling the air like one of Aunt Marge’s fat rat-nosed warbellies, his brain still unable to place the strange, warm scent.

Something like diesel fuel maybe? With toasted nuts? His mouth was watering. The smell got stronger, and she nudged his foot with her boot. 

He blinked open his eyes and gulped. She was standing right next to him, watching him with those sharp eyes. She offered him the mug, and he looked down at the swirling brown liquid.

“What is it?” he managed, and she quirked an eyebrow at him. 

“Have you never had hot chocolate before? I know this moon is on the backside of nowhere, but it is hardly a rare commodity, even here.”

He took the mug, eyes wide. “I…” the smell was warm and inviting and soft and _tempting_ , everything the preacher-man on the wireless said it would be, and he looked up at her, wondering if this was some kind of morality test.

“T’isn’t poisoned, young one. I let you into my home, I can hardly poison you, by rights of hospitality.” She settled carefully into the arm chair by the fire, and started working the knots out of her hair with thin, clever hands, her tall pointed hat falling backward and tipping over the back of her chair, somehow ending up on the little hat stand. 

By rights of hospitality, he couldn't refuse the drink without insulting her honor. The fact that she had offered him liquid unbidden made it doubly taboo to turn it away.

“Oh fah, you’ve come in from out west, haven’t you? From the Hedge?”

He blinked at her. “I… yes.” 

She pursed her lips, sniffing a little disdainfully. “Well, it won’t kill you to have a bit of sugar, whatever they told you. Drink a bit of that, I’ll not have you passing out from shock on my settee.”

He took a careful sip of the beverage, the warmth and sweetness rolling over his tongue and flooding his mouth. He would have moaned, but he caught the sound before he embarrassed himself. He took a second, larger sip, despite his firm determination to only sip as much as was necessary to avoid dishonor. The chocolate warmed him from the inside, too, like he had swallowed one of the dancing balls of foxfire that beckoned the unwary off the narrow trail. 

He looked at the old woman, and decided that it was unlikely that she would call the Snatchers down on her own head, with something as sinful as sweetened chocolate in a cow shaped tin on her counter. 

“Thank you, I was beginning to think you were going to run before you even told me what to call you.”

He pushed his hood down, rubbing dust and ash off his face, the lightning-forked scar stinging and catching the dirt, as always.

“They used to call me Mud.”

She was staring at him, hand frozen half to her mouth, gone ghost white under her thick lenses. 

He dropped his eyes, uneasy, and fought the desire to put his hood back up. Usually people barely looked at him, once they realized who, or what, rather, he was. 

Nobody trusted strangers. Not anymore.

“I… My apologies. You resemble someone I knew a long time ago,” she said, shaking her head and getting herself under control. 

“Lost in the war?”

“Yes.”

He frowned and sank a little lower on the couch, taking a sip of his drink and startling a little when it wasn’t water. Oh, right, he was drinking _hot chocolate_ , and had already drunk enough that Aunt Petunia would have thrown him to the traveling Purifier for a week. Well, she would never know, because he was never going back. 

Even if the Snatchers killed him. It would be better to be free.

He clenched his jaw and glanced at the back door, wondering if the fire locks had popped yet. His bouncing knee gave him away, and he forced it to be still.

“Well. Let us start over, now that nothing is exploding. The house tells me that it’ll be at least two hours before it’ll be radiation safe to go outside, so you’re stuck through the end of double-noon, at the very least. And if you’re that shook over the hot chocolate, hold on to your britches, because I find I rather need a whiskey.” 

There went his plans of a quick get away.

She pushed out of her chair and waved her hand over part of her workbench, which quicked a moment and then went dark. Another little blip, and a hidden door creaked open on a shelf near her head, the front made of broken parts of an egg-beater, and maybe a spent fuel cell.

He gaped at her, and she laughed. “Oh, twig, you’ve been out there a long time, nobody cares if I have a bottle of hooch.” She had rather more than a single bottle, but she poured herself a few inches from one of the ornate bottles into a tin cup and returned to her seat, sitting back into the armchair and lifting her feet up onto a crate covered with a neatly stitched blanket with a sigh.

“They called you Mud, huh? What do _you_ call you?” She glanced at him over the rim of her glass, and then took a careful sip, her eyes sliding shut for just a moment. 

“I… haven’t decided yet.” He shook his head, unsure why he was bothering to tell her anything, let alone something as ridiculous as deciding one’s own name. He waited for the words about pride and vanity and humility, and got only a mild nod instead. He peered at her; the devil’s drink was supposed to make her violent, and ugly and …. _wicked,_ but she sat there placidly, sipping her poison like it was nothing.

He really did have a lot to learn about life outside Privet. She seemed no more dangerous now as she had been when he saw her with the huge wrench, even though she apparently had chocolate and spirits and god knows what else in the house.

“Well, around here, they call me Minnie, but my name is Minerva,” she said, and he looked up in surprise. She held up a worn hand, stalling his protest. “No obligation to share your name back. I meant no harm in it, and to be frank it isn’t my entire name, just a portion, so calm your racing heart.”

He looked down at the floor again, at the rags he had wrapped around feet once his shoes had given out. The floor here had soft looking rugs, as if the old woman walked about without shoes on.

Well, they said that spirits made one weak to the pleasures of the flesh, so maybe she did.

His stomach rumbled loudly into the uncomfortable silence between them, and she snorted.

“Well, that answers the question of are you hungry, but to be honest, every young person I have ever met has been hungry. I’d apologize for the simple fare, but I suspect you’ll think it’s decadent anyway.”

She moved back to her workbench, pulling open another panel and hauling out food. He watched her cutting them both thick slices of cheese and bread, and bringing a little pot of honey to the table.

“You’re not the first runaway to find yourself stuck at this little launchpoint. I have plenty to share, and questions to pester you with.”

She handed him half of the food, and he took it slowly, wondering if he could get away with saving some for later. Her arched eyebrow made him think not, and he ate a bite of the bread, plain, shaking his head when she offered him honey for it.

The bread was delicious, faintly tasting of butter and herbs, and she was right, it did feel decadent to have a hunk of cheese the size of his hand and a slab of fresh, soft bread. A faint noise of pleasure escaped him when he realized there were bits of dried fruit in the bread, and he had eaten most of it gluttonously fast before he could stop himself.

The old woman was watching him again, and he wiped the crumbs carefully from his dirty face, ashamed he had bolted the food. It was proper to refuse food at least once when offered it, but… he was so hungry, and it had been so long since he had a full belly. He belatedly tried to hand the cheese back to her but she rolled her eyes and waved him away.

“I don’t keep the customs of the Hedge, child, and hardly expect you to do so.”

“I’m not a child,” he managed between bites of cheese, and she hummed, unconvinced. “I’m not, I’m of age, as of three fortnights ago.” He stuck the cheese in his mouth and fumbled in his shirt, yanked the neck band down, showed her the still-healing barcode tattooed into his collarbone, the silvery tracery of wire running through it.

She frowned and nodded, and then squinted at him. “This is an entirely rude thing to ask, and I would beg your pardon for it, except that I’m quite done with the ridiculous norms on this little moon. Are you perhaps a foundling child? From the war? I had thought you too young, but you’re quite small for your age.”

His mouth went dry around the cheese, and he chewed slowly, stalling. He could lie, but all she had to do was scan his code and she’d find it anyway. Legally, the war foundlings were supposed to be full citizens, cleared of any wrongs of their parents, but as he was told time and time again, bad blood was bad blood.

But Minerva had offered part of her name without demanding his, and food and _hot chocolate_ , of all things, and there were so many little Quick things in her house that she couldn’t just be a mechanic. She had to be something more.

“Yeah,” he said finally, and dragged the center of his collar open, the Mark plain on the skin of his sternum, a blurry, jagged scar, almost as old as he was. 

The Mark of the Witch, a warning to all that he was of bad blood, that he should be tolerated but not welcomed, neither harmed, nor helped. A triangle with a circle and a line, almost a handspan across. 

She hissed when she saw it, and he flinched back, dropping his collar and yanking his hood back over his head.

“Ach, no, child, you misunderstand,” she said, softly, and pushed the fabric of her shirt up, her pale, thin arm catching the light as she turned, showing him the Mark burned into her forearm. Hers was just as old, of course, but smaller, the skin around it shiny scar tissue. 

He almost leapt backward off the couch, his hood falling back, his eyes wide as moons.

“You’re a WITCH?” he shrieked, holding his bag to his chest like she was going to snatch it from him. Oh dear Lord, he was in a Witch’s _house_ , he had eaten _cake_ and drunk _chocolate_ and she probably was going to put him in the oven and _eat_ him-

She laughed, and it was hardly the cackle that the wireless had promised. No, this was a full belly laugh, rich and warm and not mocking at all. He peeked over his hands, his knees pulled up to his chest, his heart pounding so hard he could hardly breathe. 

“Oh, oh, twig, I’m so sorry, but your face,” and she set off again, pushing her goggles off to wipe at her streaming eyes. He frowned and realised that it was hardly fair of him to assume she was going to eat him up because she was a Witch, when he was one too. He uncurled, setting his bag back on his lap, trying to will his racing pulse into some kind of order.

“Well, that was the best laugh I’ve had in a lot of years, so thank you for that. Oh, your godfather is going to have a fit; to think you’ve been here this whole time!” 

“My… godfather?”

“You aren’t a _foundling_ , child. You were stolen from us, and he’s been searching for you for 17 years.”

He frowned. Witches were notorious liars, their lust for corruption so strong they couldn’t help but twist the truth, even if it didn’t get them anything. He couldn’t think of anything she could be getting out of lying to him about this, but it was just too much of a coincidence. 

“How can you be so sure I’m this child you’re missing? I’m hardly the only foundling that the Blessedly Normal took in. Not even the only one with a Mark.”

She blinked at him, as if she was surprised he was questioning it. “I knew your parents, before the War. You look quite like your father.”

He looked up, eyes blazing bright. “Are they alive? I was told…”

She shook her head. “That, I’m afraid, is true enough. They fought to the end, but they loved you like the sun shines. There was a will, a plan for you. You were _not_ left behind.”

His nose was running. His eyes felt hot and dry, but the glass in his goggles was fogging up. He rubbed his nose across the back of his hand, looked down at his bag again. It took him a long minute to get his breath back, to still his wildly beating heart, the leap of hope and joy and pure _need_ -

... But that was exactly what Witches did, right? They tempted you with the thing you wanted most? He stiffened his lip, grabbed that wild hope and strangled it down. It went, but sulked in his belly, waiting for its chance to break free.

“That proves nothing,” he managed to say. “You could guess that much from the Mark. I could look like anybody.” 

“I know your name, child,” she said, gently. 

He squinted at her. “You could have scanned my code when I walked in.”

She rolled her eyes, and pointed a finger at him. “You’ve spent entirely too much time with those horrible skeptics out there in the dust. Fine. I know how you got that scar on your head.”

He shook his head. “Nope. _I_ don’t know how I got it, so you could say it was from anything. How would I know?” He was winning this argument, misery rising in his stomach like a poisonous tide.

How _proud_ Uncle Vernon would be of him making himself miserable, of stripping himself of that spark of hope and sparing him the work. And how wrathful he would have been, for causing him the sin of pride. 

Something thudded against the back door, and both of them startled. Little alarms blinked on in panels all over the house, and he could feel the little zips and pings as the house’s systems tried to take data. The radiation was still too high, and Minerva frowned.

His heart started to pound as the thudding came again, three sharp blows, as if someone was out there in the temporarily-lethal levels of radiation he could still feel tugging at the edge of his hearing. He felt a sharp CRACK as something huge and Quick overloaded the house’s protocols and everything went dark.

“What in the world-” was as far as Minerva got, when the back door banged open hard enough that it rattled the little cow right off of the counter, the smell of chocolate suddenly overwhelming as the radiation went from distant, uncomfortable irritation to instant screaming violet madness for a horrible few heartbeats before the door slammed shut again.

It was pitch black, no light leaking in from the radiation doors, no lights on anywhere in the little house.

There was something in the chocolate-scented darkness with them. 

He could hear Minerva breathing hard to one side of him, and his own thudding heartbeats, and an organic, rasping, wheeze. The air stank of copper, and iron, and green plants, under the chocolate. He clenched his hands into fists, his nails biting into his palms. His heart was thumping so hard in his chest he thought he might pass out, but he couldn’t just leave Minerva here alone with whatever it was.

The house’s systems rebooted with a series of pops and hums, the radiation doors resealing, the venting system kicking in. The smells disappeared in a whirl of scrubbed air, leaving only the wheeze behind. He stood up, setting his bag down carefully, and took a deep breath, clenching his hands, the rags wound around his palms and wrists digging into his fingers. 

The lights tried to come back on, different panels in the house lighting up at random, squares flickering in the darkness like a holo screen tuned to nothing. Something moved in the noise, turning toward them, and he moved to put himself between it and the old woman.

He could feel it, now, something Quick about it, but muffled, wrapped in layers of shadows. The shape rose above him, towering and black, large glass eyes reflecting the flickering light. Taller and taller it got, arching over him, the mechanical breath of the thing loud this close.

The lights blinked on with a cheerful little wake up noise, set to full noon daylight, and he found himself face to face with a creature from his nightmares, the rest of the room gone blinding white.

A long mask protruded from the hooded form, pale as bone around the stark blackness of the eye sockets and fading to dead gray on the tip of the beak a few inches from his nose. The surface suddenly rippled, splitting into a thousand paper thin gills, each the bright hot red of a freshly slaughtered offering as it took in the air.

Every part of him froze, his heart clenching in his chest like a fist.

A Plague Doctor, a demon even Witches feared, a creature that sought illness and suffering to feast on the pain of the innocent. A thing from the before times, a monster saved to frighten only the most persistently cheerful and wicked children, a weapon made of unnatural appetites whose thirst knew no bounds. When there was a sickness that threatened a world the Plague Doctors would come, the preacher-man said, like buzzards to a kill, dragging bags of burning spices to season the tears of those they preyed upon, moving among the dying sampling misery like fine wine, their shadows falling like bats across any world they pleased, unstoppable by mech or might.

The Witches had created them to kill all the beautiful, blessed people, but in their hubris they created a monster that cared not what side of the war you were on, but only that you were suffering. They left those who would live, and stole away many of the not-yet-dead to eat in their caves in the sky.

He had thought they were as fake as the wand Dudley had found and broken across his back, dismissed them as another scary story to keep him in line, no more real than the Biliwack monster or shapeshifting moondogs. Yet here it was, ready to sprinkle pepper in his eyes and drink his tears. He started to shake, his pulse kicking through the clenched muscles of his chest, cold sweat coming up on his skin. 

It seemed to be sniffing at him, and the ruffling, wheezing sound was coming from the space between the layers rather than anything as normal looking as a nostril, each breath rippling through them like a wave, like the pages of a book. 

It stared at him for a heartbeat in the sudden light, and then reared back as if frightened, raising a thin, clawed hand to point at Minerva, and he heard her sputter out something in a language he didn’t know, the house lights dimming back into the fire-light like lamps.

The thing twisted its head to look at him, like he used to look at the pullets before deciding which one to bring to his Aunt for dinner, and then crouched again, peering closer. The space between its eyes lit up with green light, a sigil flashing across the pale expanse before lines traced over the entire face like geometric lightning. 

He couldn’t fight a _Plague Doctor_. They were unstoppable, inhuman creatures of the darkness between stars. His vision was going fuzzy around the edges, and he saw the creature reach for him as he fell, and was thankful that the darkness took him before it had a chance to feed.


	2. The Monster's pet

The deep black of unconsciousness slowly became the familiar darkness behind his eyes, then strobed red and black in nauseating patterns as he turned his head. Footsteps crunched over rocky ground, the world swaying in time. His skull throbbed with pain, like his brain was angry. His hands hung loosely, handwraps pulled down over his fingers, his back hot with radiation even through his jacket. 

His stomach roiled as he bounced. He opened his eyes to excruciating bright light glaring through the cloth wrapped around his face. He slammed them shut, but the light ate through his eyelids to stab at his head. He tried to push his face against the surface he was draped over, but each step drove spikes of pain and nausea into his skull until his stomach lurched in protest.

The footsteps paused as he squirmed, trying to cover his eyes again just as the thing plucked him off its shoulder and set him down, quickly unwrapping his face just as he lost his fight to keep his lunch. He felt a warm, dry hand over his eyes, shielding him from the dangerous light, and another hand rubbing gently on his back as he emptied himself onto the ground.

As soon as the heaving stopped the hands turned him into the shelter of a thick, dark coat, closing over him protectively. He could feel the heat of the sand through the rags wrapped around his feet. Whomever it was was much taller than him, but the hand on his back urged him forward as they started to walk again, and he kept up rather than be left behind in the burning light. 

It was stifling under the coat, the smell of leather and herbs sharp and unfamiliar, copper and iron scents making him as dizzy as the light bouncing up from the ground. It was enough to make him keep his eyes shut, his fingers winding into the fabric under his hands. 

Something living and breathing was in there, somewhere. He could feel the ribcage rise and fall, the muscles bunch and move, though they were taller than anyone he’d ever seen. There were pockets lining the coat, rubbing against his face, pressing into his shoulders. He could hear faint crackling and glass tinkling, mechanical ticking, as if the coat was filled with a million tiny things. His hand found his duffle bag, bouncing gently against the person's back, and sighed, panic he hadn’t gotten around to yet easing.

Whomever this was, if they wanted him dead they could just push him out into the heat of the suns. He’d be beyond saving, or at least blind, by the time the largest one set. And they had his bag. No way a demonic Witch monster would do either of those things, so he figured whomever it was, he knew for sure it wasn’t the Plague Doctor.

In a half dozen steps he realized his feet were going to burn through his rags, but he pressed on, walking as lightly as possible, the scalding pain growing slowly. He clenched his fingers harder into his rescuer’s side, breathing through it. 

Wouldn’t be the first time he had burned feet. Aunt Petunia had made him sell his shoes to pay for a new artificial apple tree after Dudley had knocked him into the old one, and he had still to walk to the schoolhouse with the other foundlings, shoes or no.

His determination to ignore his feet held out another few dozen steps, and then he hit a sharp rock, the pain sharp and startling. He yelped, and the footsteps paused again, the boots grinding as his rescuer turned to him. He tried not to fidget, feeling the eyes on him even with his tightly shut, and hissed as his foot throbbed and the rags grew damp.

A monster wouldn’t stop for him. Right?

The noise of ruffling papery gills as his rescuer sniffed at him told him he was very, very wrong, and he would have bolted if his feet weren’t screaming at him to get off the searing sand. His fingers closed into fists in its shirt, his heartbeat spiking as the thing shifted and picked him up with little difficulty and settled him across its chest, shifting the coat so it covered his feet. 

He could feel each pulse of blood thud through his ears and then a moment the rest of his aching head. His fingernails dug into the fabric under his nails. Getting his weight off his feet had made the throbbing worse, and the fear was a sour ball in his stomach that would have made him heave if he had anything left. He pressed his face to the chest, wondering if the beating heart he could hear was only an echo of his own.

Surely a demon wouldn’t have a beating heart.

It only took another few minutes to get wherever they were going, and the crunching gravel became metallic rings as they went up a gangplank. He heard the swish of a door, and then they were into blessedly cold air which went dark as the door hissed shut and locked.

He was in the ship of a Plague Doctor, and he was going to die. If his head didn’t hurt so much, perhaps he would care more. He bit his lip and turned his head deeper into its chest as the coat was pulled off. He could feel its regard, the faint wheeze of air passing over its gills as it snuffled at his face and then down his body, jerking back when it got close enough to his feet to smell the blood, he supposed.

More movement, and then he was set on a bed so soft he sank a handspan. He heard the coat rustle, and then his duffle bag was set next to him, the weight of it comforting. He curled his arms around it, pulling it to his chest, the little box and its little Quickening safe and sound. 

The demon stood close enough that he could smell the iron and copper and paper, and he didn’t dare breathe. After a long moment, he heard footsteps as it moved away, its boots thumping up a short flight of stairs and down a hallway, a door swishing open and closed behind him.

He took a deep breath, cracking an eyelid. The headache threatened nausea again, but he fought it down and carefully got his eyes open, pushing his goggles onto his head to rub at his aching face. His hand wraps were unfolded carefully over his fingers and he pushed them back up.

What kind of monster bothered keeping its prey from being sunburned?

Perhaps it enjoyed its dinner raw.

He shook the thought off. He hadn’t died yet, not in all his years, and if this monster had decided it wanted to take him up to space before it devoured him, well, at least he would get to fly.

It was easier to be brave when it wasn’t right in front of him.

Something jumped up on the bed. He froze, hands still over his eyes. Whatever it was, it was small, and when it didn’t immediately attack he pulled his hands down slowly and turned his head. There was some kind of creature sitting next to him, all four legs tucked under it neatly, tail wrapped around its grey body. He thought it was hairless, at first, and then saw a set of whiskers and a bit of hair on its nose and belatedly realized it was a cat. It twitched an ear at him dismissively and started licking at its paw. It seemed to be wearing skin one size too big, a little puddle of cat melting to the bed on either side of it.

He had always liked the ‘curse’ed cats’, back in Privet. They wandered the ordered streets with no regard for the careful fences and hedgerows, lounging where they wanted despite the condemnation from the residents. No amount of bothering could get them to move once they decided they were having a nap, and since nobody admitted to feeding or giving them water, they were declared a Trial Sent By The Lord To Be Endured.

Personally, he thought they were a much better alternative than letting the pop-lizards, who would burrow into any free wood to hiss at you when you walked by, breed out of control. The cats loved to hunt them, pawing at the holes where their heads popped up, keeping the population from getting too annoying, though he did enjoy watching Aunt Petunia shriek when a lizard hissed at her from a cupboard. He thought it was stupid that no-one let the cats eat the lizards _inside_ the houses as well, but the cats were forbidden, enforced with fear and wrath and keeping the doors firmly closed.

He had taken more than one Just Punishment for feeding or helping the cats, and was a popular scapegoat for the blame of doors left open, once a sleeping cat had been discovered.

He didn’t try to touch it, both because it might be sick and because trying to touch a cat you just met was asking to be scratched. Instead he watched it as he carefully sat up, holding his aching head in his hands. His feet were throbbing a half a beat later, a distant echo at the bottom of his feet. 

A cat… on a Plague Doctor’s ship? He couldn’t imagine the horrific monster of the stories sharing quarters with something so… fragile. The cat yawned, showing sharp teeth and a bristly tongue, and went to sleep, apparently unconcerned that he had descended on its napping spot. It didn’t look sick, so he supposed it was just a strange type of cat. He once saw one that was bright blue with dark blue stripes, hair so long he couldn’t figure out how it could possibly be comfortable in the heat. It had blinked at him grumpily and took off at a trot, ducking into a doorway, but by the time he had turned the corner after it’s plume tail, it had disappeared. Cats cared not for the rules of reality.

He leaned against the wall behind the bed, feeling the thrum of the ship powering up, the faint rumble as the doors sealed and the ramp retracted. The ship was in rough condition, working but worn, each ping and knock a cry begging to be fixed.

The ramp needed oil, and the actuator on the left side was stronger than the right, and it was gonna be a problem in about a year. The lights above his head, recessed into the wall, had been repaired incorrectly, their casing slowly melting. There was some kind of sludge caught in the main exhaust, not enough to do anything, but it made the ship uncomfortable and irritable.

He shut his eyes, sighing, easily falling into sorting the thousand tasks the ship was whining to him about. He couldn’t actually do any of them, of course, but the ship gave him a pleased ping as he ticked through the tasks, committing them to the part of his brain that worked on such things, noting which could wait and which really shouldn’t. The cat rolled over and smushed itself up against him, almost as hot as the sun bleached sand outside, resting its head on his thigh as if he was a piece of furniture.

The door to the cockpit swished open (politely requested oiling). The thing’s boots thumped down the steps, and he took a breath, trying to be as calm as the cat napping against his thigh. He heard the steps coming closer, and stumble to a stop.

He forced his eyes open.

The monster stood in the doorway, impossibly tall, one hand curled around the door frame, the other dangling limply at its side, gripping the white and grey mask. His face was shocked, almost scared, and entirely human.

It was just a man.

The air left him in a rush, and he sagged, sliding down the bulkhead wall and folding over his bag, the cat on his lap grumbling and readjusting as he fell. He wasn’t going to be eaten by a demon Witch monster, after all. He started to laugh as the sour knot of fear in his belly dissolved into something like joy, his head spinning with it. He stuffed his fist in his mouth, trying to muffle the noise out of habit.

The cat started to purr and kneaded against his leg, sharp claws pricking at him through the cloth of his trousers, and he winced, twitching and giggling, trying to pull his brain back together. If the Plague Doctor was a human, then he probably expected his guest to be a little more polite than laughing themselves sick on the sofa.

The man got himself moving again, walking past him and hanging the mask and coat in a compartment, glancing back at him every few seconds as he retrieved a few bottles a roll of bandages. 

By the time the tall figure had collected his supplies and returned to the bed, the giggles had dried up, and he was gently stroking his fingers over the arch of the cat’s back.

He pulled a low stool from a table, and sat down on it, bringing their heads level. 

They regarded each other for a long, awkward moment, before the man looked away and cleared his throat. 

“I apologize for the abrupt egress,” he said, his voice slightly raspy, like he had been yelling recently. “Minerva was quite insistent that we be gone before the suns set. Seems to believe that Snatchers may be incoming.” He glanced up, and then down again, tisking as he saw the blood stains on his feet. “May I?” he asked, reaching for the filthy rags, and he flinched.

“Peace, child. I am a doctor, a healer. I only wish to look at your wounds, I promise.”

He let the man inside the Plague Doctor unwrap his feet, biting his lip to stifle the noise of pain that tried to escape as the cloth came away with a layer of him still on it. “Can I assume you have no sentiment for these ‘shoes’?” he said, and threw them away when he didn’t get an objection.

“Dorian seems to have already made the determination about your character,” he said as he examined the burns with quick, light touches, “And to that end, I will offer you a more formal welcome. I am called Severus. Minerva said you had not chosen a name, is that right? Then I will not ask it of you. It will only be you and I for the majority of the journey, so it matters not.”

Dorian opened his eyes and flicked his thin, ratlike tail, and Severus rolled his eyes. “Fine. I stand corrected. You and I and the multitude of creatures on the ship, all of whom are valid, you pedantic little goblin.”

The cat just yawned, tongue vivid pink against the grey of his skin, and turned his back on Severus, curling up on his stomach and purring loudly.

“Rude feline. You’re a stowaway, I could throw you outside, you’d crisp in ten seconds here, you realize that? I told you to stay in the ship, but you just had to come along.”

Dorian flicked an ear back at the healer and then ignored him, his paws kneading again as he purred. He was heavy, and hotter than the cats he remembered touching, but then, they had all had fur. 

Severus carefully cleaned and bandaged his burns and the cut across the ball of his foot, pouring liquids on the clean bandages before wrapping them up until it looked like he was wearing white socks. The entire time he kept up his side of what sounded like an old argument, the cat responding with flicks of his tail or nothing at all, and by the time the long fingers were tucking the gauze into place, he wasn’t at all sure if he was actually speaking to the cat in some way or if he talked to it like some people talked to their ships.

He sat back finally, wiping his hands with a splash of something and then bundling all the used bits into a bin that went into a slot on the wall. The ship grumbled that it hadn’t had the biocontainment unit cleaned in more than a year, but it sucked away the trash and incinerated it in the plasma arc in the engine core anyway, the plant matter causing a brief flair of flavor, his blood and skin a prickling shock. The lights brightened a hair, shifting blue for a few heartbeats before warming back to near-neutral.

He frowned, reaching out and touching the ship wall, inquiring, and the ship responded much stronger than before, almost bursting with excitement, panels here and there blinking with green and gold and little forked shapes. He could feel it shiver, like a horse that wanted to run. 

// "Welcome, Harry! Don't worry, I'm Jump-E2. Wanna fly? We can fly so fast. SO FAST. Zoom."//

He shook his head hard as the weird, buzzing consciousness blinked something close to language at him. It was the… ship? The _whole_ ship, not just the small sparks that made each small part work, but a shifting, moving, _thinking_ whole. He had never touched anything like it, in all the time he had been feeling the little Quick things all over the place.

It was like realizing a beehive had a _name_ when you had only ever dealt with the bees. Well, if you realized it because the beehive had asked you over for tea. 

The whine of the engine kicked up, and he shook his head frantically, trying to calm the ship. It hadn’t been kidding about being jumpy! Severus was looking at him, head cocked, and then suddenly seemed to hear the engine and left for the cockpit, his footsteps hurrying to a run as soon as he was around the corner. 

Dorian sniffed petulantly and pulled himself to a stand, stretching and hopping down from the bed to pad after Severus, his tail a question mark.

The ship powered back down to the warmup hum after a few seconds, disappointment running down the light panels in little waves like rain on a window. Or the holovids of it, anyway. He’d never actually seen it rain.

// Bᴜᴛ ᴡᴇ ᴄᴀɴ ɢᴏ ғᴀsᴛ. :( // the ship sent him, and he stroked the wall, promising that they could go fast soon, but they had to wait. He could feel the strain on the engine from even that little extra exertion, the heat not able to dissipate because of the scorching radiation from the double suns.

The ship brightened at his explanation and went back to warming up slowly, shunting excess heat from the engine into some kind of battery he didn’t understand, and then sending him a faint // sᴜɴs sᴇᴛ. Wɪʟʟ ʙᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅʏ. … _Zᴏᴏᴍ_. // 

He sighed, unsure what had just happened. Severus reappeared, a little wide eyed, though he schooled his features back into calm neutrality. “Well, that was unexpected. Do you happen to be the cause of that power surge?”

He shook his head and managed to drag his voice up out of wherever it had crawled into when he had seen Severus for the first time. “The ship is excited, wants to go fast,” he said, proud that his voice was steady. That’s the kind of statement you could get a reeducation for, and while he aimed for confidence, he sounded squeaky even to his own ears.

Severus raised an eyebrow at him, and then looked around the room. “The ship told you it wants to go fast?”

He nodded, wondering if he should have lied.

Severus rubbed his hand down his face and then reached out and patted the wall. The ship rippled a little red through the lights, as if reacting to the touch. “Less than an hour, and it’s already talking to you. This shortship and the House it’s attached to have been part of my family for generations, and I’ve never gotten more than grudging acceptance of my paltry skills. I wonder what the rest of Spinner’s End will think of you.”

There was an excited flicker from the lights, and Severus nodded again, though he got the feeling that the healer couldn’t actually feel the anticipation in it.

“I take it from your expression that you are as surprised as I that the ship responded?”

He nodded, and Severus sighed again, looking at the bed with a fair bit of longing before sliding into one of the padded, built in chairs on the other side of the room. Dorian tapped at his boots, and he leaned down to unlace them, his long black hair falling over his face. “We have twenty or so minutes before the suns are low enough that we won’t blow the engine before we break atmo. You’ll need to stay off of those feet for at least two cycles, but we’ll be out of the gravity well of this moon shortly, so as long as you don’t bump them, you should be fine.”

“Where are we going?” he asked, and Severus looked up, his boots half unlaced. His nose was hooked, like the drawing of the Witches in the book at the schoolhouse, but his frown was confused, not murderous. 

“Away from here, firstly. But my route takes me close enough to you godfather’s normal range that I said I would ferry you there. Minerva told me she had explained-”

He shook his head. “Only just barely. When you showed up, she was trying to convince me I wasn’t a foundling, but a stolen child this mysterious godfather had been searching out for 17 years.”

The healer seemed to chew on that for a few moments, unlacing his boots and pulling them off his feet, his toes stretching wide and then wiggling, like you would your hands after a long time holding a heavy pail. Dorian stuck his head in the boot and snuffled, before jerking away and wrinkling his nose, shaking his head so hard his ears flapped. Severus laughed softly, scooping the cat onto his lap as he sat up, crossing his legs at the ankle and leaning back, slouching into the plush embrace of the cushions.

“Ah. And did she convince you?”

He snorted. “My goal is to get off this rock. If being this child buys me a ticket onto Jumpy here and out there, then yeah, I’m your missing kid, sure.” Monsters didn’t have long toes and pet cats. 

Severus raised an eyebrow at the name as Dorian, sprawled on the slope of his chest, stretched up to butt his head into his chin for pets. “You have no plans other than get off this moon?” His fingers slid across the cat’s head, a smile tugging at his lip.

He shrugged. “I’ve never been anywhere else that I remember, and once I came of age, they were putting me out to the sands to fend for myself. If I’m being sent out into the universe to die, I’d like to see rather more of it than this tiny rock.” His feet had stopped hurting, which was very nice. In fact, his headache had faded, too. “Thank you for taking care of my feet by the way. I don’t have any money to pay for the service, I’m afraid.”

The healer looked horrified. “I wouldn’t accept such a thing, even if you had offered it. What do you take me for, some mudfoot butcher? I took an oath, and more than that, I could no more leave you to suffer than you’re going to be able to ignore the ship, now that it knows you.”

He blinked. “Oh. That’s… not how things worked in Privet.”

Severus snorted. “I expect not. I cannot think of a more unpleasant place to have grown up. I’ve been to Hedge enclaves before, and every one has been a miserable, joyless blight. I don’t blame you for wanting out. And damn that meddling old woman for not giving me the whole story before dumping you over my shoulder and kicking us out of the house as soon as the radiation levels were less than lethal. She said nothing about you being dubious of the claim.” 

The ship’s systems hummed and beeped as the secondary systems kicked in, the vents pulling the stale air out and others letting in fresh air, full of the smell of dirt and plants. He wondered where the air was coming from, since it sure wasn’t the blasted hellscape outside. Music swelled, and the lights warmed and softened, more of them coming on but all of them turning down. In a few moments the shortship cabin felt more like Minerva’s workshop than a transport ship.

“Ah, much better,” Severus said, and rubbed his eyes. “So, you are willing to go along with this notion that you are the missing child in exchange for passage off this rock. Done. I will take you to your godfather, and you may decide what to do with the rest of your life.”

“I can’t pay you for that, either.”

Severus rolled his eyes. “You’ll have to let go of that concept, if you’re planning on joining Wixen society.”

“What concept?”

“Money.” The ship beeped, and Severus’ relief was plain. “Are you ready to get out of this horrible little corner of the universe?”

“You have no idea.”

Severus’ smile was blinding for a moment before it disappeared as if it had never been, tucked back into the faintly sour neutral that seemed to be his default. He unfolded himself out of his chair, all long legs and arms, Dorian draped over his arm like a deflating gasbag. He picked up his boots by the back loops with his toes and casually handed them up to his hand, as if that was at all normal. 

His eyes went as round as saucers, and Severus must have caught the look, because he paused, balanced on the ball of one foot, the other bent up like a stork. He looked confused for a moment, and then down at his foot. “Another surprise? Well. It’s a big universe. We will have time to speak of it.” He stowed his boots, and headed for the cockpit, pausing only to say “Tuck your bag into the netting on the side of the bunk. I’ll turn off the grav system as soon as we’re in lowG, and bring you up to the cockpit to watch. It’s pretty beautiful, your first time.”

Without his boots, the healer’s footsteps were silent, and the swish of the door was the only sound he made during his retreat. He tucked his bag into the stretchy netting, patting it to make sure it was secure before laying back.

The ship’s engines roared to life, the whole thing shaking like a donkey with a fly, and he stroked the wall without thinking about it.

// Yᴇᴀʜ! Sᴜɴs ᴅᴏᴡɴ, ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ɢᴏ ᴢᴏᴏᴍ! Sᴏ ғᴀsᴛ! Yeah, Suns down, gonna go zoom. So fast! //  Jumpy sent, and he laughed as the ship sort of hopped, jolting him against the cushions. He heard a thump and a grinding noise that made him wince. Alarms started blaring.

// Nᴏᴛ ᴀ ᴘɪʟᴏᴛ. _Hᴇᴀʟᴇʀ_ ᴏғ _Sᴛᴜғғ_. Nᴏᴛ ᴀ ᴘɪʟᴏᴛ. // the ship complained, and he winced. He’d wondered if he’d die before he’d get to space, after all.

The ship lurched again, but this time upwards, the engine backwashing dirt and rocks onto the hull like the spattering of shotgun pellets. He could feel the ground fall away, even without being able to see it. With every foot they climbed something unclenched in him, and he pressed his face into his arm, stifling the entirely inappropriate moan that tried to escape his lips as they hit an air pocket and dropped a dozen feet. The music skipped. He was weightless for a few heartstopping seconds before the nav system caught and leveled them out. The lights rippled, annoyed, and suddenly he heard the cockpit door swish open.

Severus’ voice escaped, frustration and anger almost covering the panic leaking around his voice. 

“Dorian, damnit, come back _here_ . You’ll be sad if we hit another air pocket - wait, what lever? I pulled that lever, you blasted contraption, I’m trying to retract the landing gear, stop telling me to do _what I am already trying to do!”_

// NOT a _pilot._ // the ship sent again when he touched it, and showed him the problem; a portion of the landing gear had expanded from the heat and wouldn’t retract all the way, and the sensor controlling it was half melted. 

The ship shivered again, fighting the control of the man at the helm. The lights flickered, and then came back on, all blood red, pulsing like a heartbeat.

The cat hopped up on the bed and crawled into his lap, and he curled an arm over him as they dropped again, holding him gently even as he shot claws into the fabric of his shirt. Severus yelled an obscenity, and then there was a clatter of buckles being undone and the flat slap of running bare feet.

Dorian screamed at him as soon as he appeared, and he flicked a gesture at him before scooping the both of them off the bed and against his chest like they weighed nothing, dashing down the short hallway and summarily dumping him into the padded pilot’s chair. 

The alarms immediately stopped, the shuddering smoothing out like it had never been, the awful red light blinked back to a soothing golden glow. Even the music came back on, a swell of triumphant horns and strings. 

But none of those things really mattered, because the front screen showed the pink vault of the sky overhead, and the dusty, dry orange rockscape he had spent his whole life itching to escape. Dorian made a little puuurup noise and jumped out of his lap and onto Severus’, perched in the copilot’s chair atop of a stack of cushions and blankets decorated with fish skeletons and mice with glass bubbles over their heads.

“Oh,” he said softly, awe and joy filling his chest until he thought he might throw up again. His hands dropped to the dusty black control panels on either arm of the couch. There were levers and wheels and buttons and all, but they were added later, when real pilots went away. Jumpy hated them; they were uncomfortable, irritating like a badly fitting shoe. It had been so long since anyone had used them that the left hand panel had a cup holder attached to it, which he pulled off without asking.

He pressed his palms to the dull black glass, and lights strobed through the cabin, purple and blue and green, pulling his eyes, pulling his attention forward and he _fell-_

The ship disappeared. Or he became the ship. Which it was didn’t really matter because suddenly he was streaking through the air, the wind roaring in his ears, the pink sky above and the rust colored ground rolling away below, faster than the train, faster than the purple fireball, faster than the pain and the fear and the shame of growing up a Witch in Privet. He pitched up, up, rising out of the moonshadow and emerging the brillance of the sun, and hung suspended for a weighless, endless moment, arms outstretched, staring into the glittering radiation with eyes that had never been allowed to see. 

In that single, still moment, hanging vertical in the sky, his shadow hundred miles long, he could faintly hear someone yelling, and a cat yowling.

Gravity caught him again, pulling him over backward, and he let himself fall, feeling like unnecessary parts of him were cracking and falling away. Something was swelling inside him, huge and hot, rising up in his chest like his ribs were made of electricity, and a whoop of joy escaped him spun into a roll, twisting his body through the air as if he had never done anything else. He pivoted, shot sideways with a thought, looped into a long slow circle that took him back to where he had started. With one last glance at the clod of dirt that had been his prison, he gathered himself up, and reached out to his copilot, the ship AI as eager as he to leave this place behind.

“Hey, Jumpy, wanna go fast?”

_“Zᴏᴏᴍ!”_

**

Years later, some of the kids in Privit who still remembered Mud told the story of the night a blazing star had streaked over the Hedge, tracing out a triangle and a circle and a golden line of fire, and left behind only the sound of terrified shrieking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is as far as I got for NaNoWriMo. I'm going to continue this, but I've a few chapters of Corvus Fallere 3 to finish first.
> 
> Thanks go out special to Crow, and all the lovely henfen who beta'd and put up with me shrieking at you in the sprint channel. <3
> 
> Please let me know if you like it! You know I got that comment addiction, (which has been being fed so much lately. I really am the luckiest mouse. ) Feed meeeee. :3


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